The Student Voice of Mapletown High School

Subnautica: a game beneath the waves of planet 4564B

March 1, 2018
By Leigh Goforth

SAN FRANCISCO – Subnautica, released on January 23rd of this year, is an almost entirely underwater survival video game created by Unknown Worlds Entertainment.

The beautiful underwater world of Subnautica was one of the most anticipated games Unknown Worlds Entertainment has created. Early access versions of the game came out in Microsoft Windows in December 2014, Mac OS X in June 2015, and for Xbox One in May 2016.

A view of the Aurora with Ryley looking from atop his lifepod

The game begins as the Aurora, a spaceship owned by the Alterra company, starts its sudden descent to planet 4564B. The player is Ryley Robinson, the Non-Essential Systems Maintenance Chief, entering Lifepod 5. After launching, the charaacter is knocked unconscious by a panel knocked loose by a fire extinguisher that fell out of its holder during the explosion of the Aurora. Upon waking up, the player puts out the fire and they are free to explore the ocean to obtain food, materials, and blueprints.

The game includes dozens of creatures, some of the most iconic being the peepers and the Reaper Leviathans. A multitude of people play this game, including one of the recent seniors of the week, Stephen Skumlien.

“Subnautica is a game I could play for hours,” said Stephen.

The game has extremely positive reviews from many players on multiple social media platforms. A YouTube personality with 18 million subscribers, Seán McLoughlin, said, after watching the credits, “I’m so full of emotion right now… Oh my god, what an awesome game! I’ve been playing this game for, like, what? Three, four years now? It’s such a huge part of the channel and I can’t believe I actually got to the end of the story. It was so good!”

Markiplier, a YouTube personality with 19 million subscribers, said at that same point, “This has been such a cool adventure! It has been so fun!”

The only change being requested is the addition of multiplayer. However, as Charlie Cleveland, one of the main developers of Subnautica, says, “Now we find ourselves in a difficult situation: we all really want co-op player, but adding it would take us many months of work. We almost have to start over from the beginning, as it affects everything.” It won’t be soon, that’s for sure, but it is a possibility.